Antietam Reconsidered
Like if you want using the keys below; only I can see who you are.
By the summer of 1862, the American Civil War in the east—the 90 miles between the two opposing capitals—was in a sort of stasis mostly imposed by two stale realities: the timidity of George McClellan and the relative poverty of the Confederate armies. The Confederates couldn't win battles and hold territory. While the Union armies could hold turf—and were doing better than that in the west—the Army of the Potomac was commanded by a brilliant administrator who hated the idea that his troops had to fight. While the Confederates under Robert E. Lee couldn't afford too many stand-up fights, the Union under McClellan could, but just didn't like to.
Ninety Miles…
To break this stalemate before another winter in camp, Lee conceived a plan to bring McClellan's army to battle on northern soil. There, Lee would defeat McClellan and demoralize the Union in time to influence the mid-term Congressional elections. This would destabilize Lincoln and the radical Republicans and bring the conflict to a negotiated conclusion, leaving The South (TM) to go on its merry way. All this depended on Lee's ability to get the Army of the Potomac to fight somewhere outside Virginia and defeat it.
Thus was born the Maryland Campaign of 1862.
Conceptually, it was a hail-Mary. Everything depended on everything else going in the Confederacy's favor, something that had not really happened yet in the war. While the Manassas campaign of 1862 was a Federal rout, the Confederates lacked the wherewithal to capitalize on Federal disorganization. Even while the Confederacy was victorious (meaning they defeated several invasions) in the east, elsewhere, the Union armies were moving more or less unencumbered by Confederate forces.
Only distance and logistics stopped the Federals from overrunning the Confederacy altogether.
Lee launched his campaign on 3 September 1862 with the best of intentions, fighting a minor battle in the mountain passes where McClellan had stolen a march on Lee and cut him off. After two weeks of marching and fighting, Lee's depleted army came to rest near Sharpsburg, Maryland on the evening of 16 September, knowing that the Army of the Potomac was just across the small tributary of the Potomac called Antietam Creek. There they waited for the morning when McClellan's force—over twice Lee's strength—would surely crush the Army of Northern Virginia.
That's one version.
Another is that Lee knew full well how timid McClellan was, and also knew that concerted action by corps commanders was not a Union strength. Lee had taken the measure of McClellan many times and found him wanting as a field commander. While the Army of the Potomac was large, it was not as destructive as all that. However, after two weeks of marching and fighting in the late summer heat, Lee’s ranks were thin. He knew that even a badly handled but colossal force could run over his weakened host in a morning, but he gambled McClellan would wait for Lee…or just march away.
So Lee waited.
Better scribes than I have described the day of bloodletting that was the battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg, so I won't duplicate those efforts or paraphrase from them. The critical thing to remember about the slaughters of 17 September at the bridge or the wheat field or the cornfield or anywhere else is that the fight was an uncoordinated mess that actually used less than 40% of the available Union forces. By the time McClellan stopped fighting, not only was Lee’s thinned army pretty well beaten, but the time was only late afternoon, with as much as another three hours of daylight left. The 22,000 plus casualties incurred had mostly been in the morning, and the fighting slowed to a smoke-choked crawl by noon. McClellan had the power to destroy Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia then and there.
But he didn't.
Little Mac enjoyed having his army, not using it for fighting. The result was a tactical draw, but a partial Federal victory for having turned Lee back to Virginia again. But it disgusted the Federal commanders enough to prompt McClellan's replacement two months later, and the battle itself affected the mid-term elections and the subsequent conflict not at all. But, once rid of McClellan, the Army of the Potomac could fight on its own terms. While many point to Antietam as being important for the release of the Emancipation Proclamation, in fact, it was little more than coincidental. Nor was America’s bloodiest single day of battle very impressive to Europe or anyone else outside the country. Antietam, while legendary for many reasons, simply was neither decisive nor even important as Civil War battles go. It decided nothing, other than showing everyone that McClellan, while an excellent organizer, didn’t know what he was doing when it came to fighting, and was too timid to just bull his way to victory.
The Devil’s Own Day: Shiloh and the American Civil War
I’ll not make a case for Shiloh being any more decisive than Antietam, but I will say it had a greater effect on the course of the conflict than anything that happened in the Eastern Theater in 1862.
The Devil’s Own Day depicts Shiloh as a soldier’s battle, where neither commander truly had control of the fighting, where corporals could make as large a strategic decision as a colonel, and where from before sunup to nearly sundown on that first terrible day, no one was certain of the outcome. Available from your favorite bookseller or from me if you want an autograph.
Coming Up…
Leviathan Awakening
Six Ways to Rewrite History IV
And Finally...
On 14 September:
1752: The calendars skipped ahead by eleven days in the British Isles and its colonies. The change from the Julian calendar to the Georgian calendar, directed by Parliament in 1750, was to better place/control where Easter fell, which is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring solstice.
2006: Germany ordained the first three rabbis since 1933, in Dresden. German Jewry had been harder hit by the Holocaust/Showa than any other country (nearly 99% of German Jews were killed or displaced). It took a great deal more time to not only build a yeshiva community, but to encourage enough people to commit to the scholarship.
And today is NATIONAL PARENTS DAY OFF. Yeah, sure; pull the other one, pal.